


Substitute

by thedevilchicken



Category: The Following
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fake Character Death, M/M, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2821754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU after season 1. Ryan is dead, and Mike seeks out Joe. He's not sure if he wants revenge or a substitute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Substitute

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Galadriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galadriel/gifts).



He was sitting there on the porch when Mike arrived, large as life and drinking straight from a bottle of cheap scotch. It wasn’t a good look but Joe didn’t look like he cared all that much about it.

Mike guessed he should’ve been surprised to see him, at least to see him alive, but it was hard to be surprised when he was running on one of Ryan’s hunches. The times had been few and far between when he’d turned out to be wrong, even if Mike had kinda wished he would be most of the time. It had never meant anything good, for either of them, when Ryan was right.

He watched him for a minute or so through the windshield before he finally left the car and started toward the house. Joe looked up, the beard and the cap a pretty effective disguise unless you knew who you were looking at or looking for, and he calmly set aside his drink. Otherwise, he didn’t move. Apparently, he was more sober and alert than he’d looked.

“Agent Weston,” he said. He didn’t even pretend he wasn’t who he was, and Mike guessed that was all the courtesy he could ask for.

Mike was carrying a gun, in a holster at his hip. He made it nice and obvious, tucking back one side of his open leather jacket, but he didn’t actually take it out, just left it there for him to see quite clearly that he wasn't taking it out. Joe nodded faintly in acknowledgement and didn’t move for the shotgun resting there in the doorway behind him. Not just yet, at least. Besides, he’d likely worked out that Mike was there alone from the distinct lack of blaring sirens or any additional agents exiting the vehicle from which he’d just emerged. There was no badge at his belt. Joe being Joe, he’d probably figured out already that this wasn’t exactly official business.

It was good to know Joe still didn’t consider him a threat. Given the circumstances, he guessed he wasn’t.

He stopped a few metres away, boots already caked in dust from the yard. Joe eyed him carefully and that was the moment Mike made his decision.

“We need to talk,” he said. “It’s about Ryan.”

***

The night Ryan died, they were both a total mess. Ryan had been drinking again and Mike, like a fucking idiot, hadn’t made more than a token attempt to stop him because he’d been drinking, too. They’d argued. When Mike got to the ER and pulled back the curtain, Ryan was already dead. 

He didn’t know how to tell Ryan's niece and so he didn’t, he just left the hospital and got into his car, drove away like it didn’t mean anything to him that they were sending Ryan’s body down to the morgue. His heart had given up in the middle of some godforsaken dive bar Mike had always hated and they hadn't been able to bring him back, completely failed to resuscitate. Mike swerved to miss the oncoming traffic, wondered if maybe he’d meant to hit something, wondered if he’d wanted to die, too. It was months of melodramatic self-pity before he had a real answer to that. He guessed the fact that he was driving severely under the influence had made his self-pity worse. 

He went home that night, back to his apartment, walked in with the lights off and tossed his keys onto the counter with a clatter, cursed as he walked into the back of a chair and nearly fell down like the drunken fool he was right at that moment. When he collapsed into bed, the sheets still smelled like Ryan, that weird combination of alcohol and hair gel and _him_ that Mike was suddenly terrified he was going to lose by sleeping there alone and then he'd forget completely, like he’d forget nearly everything about him in the end. He threw up in the bathroom and then slumped to the floor against the cold glass panels in the side of the shower, his head in his hands. 

They’d been together for a while. It wasn’t dating, nothing that formal or recognisable, nothing that constructive, just _together_ in the way that sometime after Claire’s ‘death’ they’d been drunk one night and then drunker and _then_. They'd been at Ryan’s place, like they always were at that point, Chinese food half-eaten and abandoned on the table, three cartons knocked to the floor when Ryan pushed him back and laughed and kissed him like that was the natural end to the night. Later, Mike remembered feeling giddy as a dumb fucking schoolgirl as he shoved Ryan back and he was smiling, a huge goofy grin that he saw on his reflection in the glass of a picture frame, before they were up against a wall and pulling at each other’s clothes. 

It didn’t go much further that night; they were too damn drunk for it, fell asleep half-dressed in Ryan’s bed sprawling all over each other. Mike woke shirtless in his jeans, the top button of his fly mysteriously open and his socks nowhere to be found, with a pounding headache he knew aspirin wouldn’t shift though he took some anyway. He’d meant to leave, sneak out before Ryan woke and missing socks be damned, but he wound up eating cold Chinese food sitting barefoot at the kitchen counter wearing one of Ryan’s t-shirts, almost out of spite. Ryan had finally come in, looking like hell, and glanced at him sitting there like he knew _exactly_ what had happened. He didn’t say he didn’t know. He didn’t say he did. They didn’t mention it at all and Mike flat-out refused to feel awkward about still being there that morning. He just wasn't going to allow any morning after regrets.

They were back there two nights later. Mike felt drained, the administrative leave getting to him ‘cause there was nothing he could do but wait and hell if he wanted to go back anyway. He couldn’t even muster the enthusiasm to give a fuck about Ryan’s new pet project, like looking through the entire investigation with the asshat assumption that Joe Carroll was _alive_ made any sense and he told him so, every time they sat together in that room with all the photos and the maps and the bullshit that was leading Ryan down another goddamn rabbit hole. And besides, even were there something hidden there in that tangled mess of non-evidence, they’d both have needed to be a whole lot more sober to find it. 

They drank on the couch watching basketball, like either of them really gave a damn about watching it, making all the right noises at all the right plays until it didn’t seem to matter anymore who won or lost. Mike was angry and sad and bitter and so twisted up and turned around he wanted to hurt someone or just hurt himself trying. Ryan was so fucked up it was like even the possibility Joe was still out there didn’t mean much of anything at all except in the abstract, a distraction from Claire and from Mike and from everything else going on in his life. Mike tacked on _guilty_ to the list of dumbfuck adjectives he was using to describe himself because what Ryan was going through was because of him and he knew it. But he didn’t even think of telling Ryan about Claire, knew he couldn't because if Ryan were in his right mind he'd understand, or maybe he wouldn't and he needed protecting from that. Maybe all of that just made him feel guiltier. 

Mike spilled vodka down his neck, over his chin and right down under the collar of his shirt and he laughed ‘cause it was so absurd, the whole thing, the situation, the two of them. He was still smiling when Ryan moved in closer, his movement heavy, drunk, his hands finding Mike’s shirt and his mouth finding Mike’s neck and then he wasn’t smiling anymore, he was resting his head back on the back of the couch and reeling, the room tilting away to the side. Ryan’s tongue moved over his neck and up to his prickly jaw, heedless of the stubble, following the line of spilled booze like he couldn't stand to waste it. Then he ducked down, tugged down the neck of Mike’s shirt as he pressed his mouth to the hollow at the base of his throat, pulled up the hem of his shirt and moved lower, sucking, teeth grazing. Mike couldn’t move. Apparently Ryan didn’t want him to.

But in the end it was another glorious night of the two of them being too drunk to fuck. Ryan went down on him for a brief couple of minutes, all vodka and bloodshot eyes but somehow still hot as hell before they stumbled into the bedroom, then another couple of minutes of Ryan jerking him off before he passed the fuck out and left Mike somewhere between massively, bizarrely entertained and frustratedly pissed. Mike finished himself off in the bathroom, not sure if he was more amused or resentful about that, had another couple of shots and collapsed into bed once he'd decided he just didn’t care one way or the other.

There was cold pizza in the morning, sitting there in his boxers on the couch. Ryan made coffee. They didn’t talk about it. 

Two nights later, the same. There was a bottle of tequila and a shaker of salt and Ryan stripped Mike naked somewhere past midnight once they’d drunk enough to tune out the godawful softcore porn TV movie they’d both been half-watching like that was normal for them and not the tiniest bit weird. Suddenly it was body shots in the bedroom and Ryan’s mouth and hands on parts of him it almost made him blush to think about. Mike lost some kind of bullshit made-up drinking game and sucked Ryan off like that was his forfeit, but in the morning it was like nothing had changed. 

Two nights later, _the same_. They came in from a bar, barely able to stand, keeping each other upright more by force of will than by any sort of dexterity and when they got inside, Ryan tripped and fell and burst into a whole gale of laughter as he sprawled on the floor. Mike locked the door and when he turned back around Ryan had found his way up to his knees. He looked at Mike and the laughter died down to an inebriated chuckle, then nothing. Mike stepped closer; Ryan hooked his fingers into Mike’s pockets and tugged him closer still. His fingers were surprisingly dextrous for someone so damn drunk and his mouth was hot as he sucked briefly at the space between Mike’s thigh and abdomen, when he took Mike’s cock into his mouth with a lazy swirl of tongue. It didn’t take long, Ryan’s fingernails digging into the backs of Mike's thighs, Mike’s fingers twisted almost too tight into Ryan’s hair, then they were in the bedroom and Mike was out first, for once. 

He woke naked. He groaned at the light ‘cause they’d forgotten to close the damn blinds and when he finally managed to open his eyes the whole way, Ryan was lying there, watching him. The fact that Ryan was actually conscious that early in the morning took a moment to register, let alone the fact he was being watched.

“Guess we can’t avoid this now,” Ryan said. Somehow, he had the balls to look vaguely amused. 

Mike shrugged, rubbed at his eyes and then looked at him again, letting his vision adjust to the sunlight like that was going to erase the fact that Ryan was looking at him, like that, right there. 

“Guess not,” he said.

It took a couple of minutes after Ryan wandered off stark naked into the bathroom for Mike to understand this. _He_ was the one with the problem here, not Ryan. He was the one who found this whole thing fundamentally unsettling, no matter the fact that he’d been living with a puppy-dog crush for a year or more. He’d been disabused of any and all romantic notions and then been left with this, whatever the hell it was. He guessed he had to decide if it was enough, and by the time Ryan returned, smelling like toothpaste and mouthwash over a faint aroma of last night’s cheap-ass buffalo wings, he had a decision.

“You look like you’re gonna freak out,” Ryan said, hands crossed over his bare chest as he leaned back against the wall by the bedroom door. He still looked amused but kinda resigned underneath it, like he expected Mike to leave and like that was only natural.

Mike didn’t freak out. He left the bed and they kissed pressed up against the wall, skin on skin. There was lube in the drawer in the nightstand that Ryan claimed he used for jerking off and they wound up fucking in their hung-over haze, Ryan bitching about his wrists as he propped himself up over him and Mike bitching about his lower back as Ryan pushed inside him. It was awkward in the beginning and Mike laughed like that made sense and then Ryan was laughing, too, like they were fucking losing it and they probably were. Mike pushed Ryan back and turned onto his hands and knees and they tried again, better this time, easier, hotter, Ryan’s hands gripping tight at Mike’s hips. They left the bed, toting the damn lube with them, fucked up against the bedroom wall, on the kitchen floor, over the back of the couch, a few thrusts here and there like they were auditioning for some kind of lurid fucking porno, like it was some kind of competition.

Ryan pushed Mike down on the rug in the lounge and straddled his hips, ground against him like just that wasn’t going to finish him off in no time at all and then guided the head of Mike’s cock up against him, pressed down, made Mike shudder as he rode him slowly. Mike’s arms went wide on the floor as he arched his back, flexed his hips, tried to catch his breath as they screwed, just like that. They’d gone 0 to 60 in a fucking millisecond and Mike's booze-addled brain just couldn’t keep track.

It wasn’t always like that. Sometimes all they did was watch crappy TV and argue over sports and eat semi-edible bar food over a pitcher of beer or four. Then, sometimes they’d wind up in the shower washing spilled tequila off of each other’s bare skin. Sometimes they’d head to Mike’s and fuck all over his place instead of Ryan’s, sleep in his bed, do it all again the next day like all they could do to keep on going was drag each other through the day somehow, some way. Sometimes, Mike had wondered where they’d have been without it.

They didn’t change each other. They were never happy in the strictest sense 'cause they were both far too fucked up for that, individually, collectively. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t healthy, it wasn’t what either of them needed. They were killing each other and Mike guessed they both knew it.

But sometimes, just sometimes, it helped.

***

Joe ushered him into the house and Mike went ahead, stepped inside in front of him, practically dared him to try something though he wasn't quite sure what he'd do if he did. Joe just followed him in and closed the door behind them, led him through to the lounge next door and gestured vaguely at the couch though neither one of them sat down.

“What _about_ Ryan?” he asked.

Mike paused and looked around, tried to imagine Joe living here and came up really, really short on that, though he guessed the clothes he was wearing and that damn ugly beard that covered half his face should’ve made it easier. He still didn’t sit. He just turned and looked at Joe instead, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. 

“He’s dead,” Mike said. It sounded matter-of-fact but it still felt like bile in his throat, like rocks in his gut, and it had been three months already. 

Joe smiled a wry smile, crossing his arms over his chest. “And I should believe you when you say that because…?”

“You think I came all the way here to lie to you?”

Joe seemed to consider this for a moment; his arms dropped from over his chest and the smile faded away as he looked at Mike. His expression turned entirely sour, the amusement evaporating.

“And you came all the way here just to bring me the good news?” Joe said. 

Mike gave a brief chuff of bitter laughter. “Say _good news_ like you mean it, Joe,” he said. “I came here to tell you ‘cause you’re the only one who’ll understand.”

That was the truth, at least part of it, and in that moment they both knew it. They’d both lost something. They were the only two people who’d ever get just what that something was.

***

Mike stayed. 

He couldn’t figure out why in the start ‘cause it made no damn sense at all; he should’ve called the cops, called the Bureau, called somebody, called _anybody_ who could’ve swooped in and picked Joe up or just shot him on the spot because Mike was sure he’d done more than enough to deserve it. Debra Parker’s death was on him and that was enough by itself, Mike thought. 

Judy took Joe aside when she got in from the store and she asked him in hushed tones, with furtive glances in Mike's general direction, if he really thought they could trust this guy. Mike found that ironic, given who she was talking to at that moment and who she was talking about, and apparently so did Joe who didn’t bother to hide his amusement, or to hush his reply. Joe told her she could trust him, told her he was FBI and he was safe as houses, then he brought her across the room and introduced her to him. Mike shook her hand and she looked at him like he’d just spontaneously burst into flames and wanted to take her along with him, like he was the devil incarnate despite Joe's suspiciously kind words. It took a month for her to actually warm to him at all. 

Mandy was great, on the other hand. She was a whole lot smarter than anyone gave her credit for, especially her mom, and Mike liked her even though it was clear as day that she had some kind of twisted father-figure thing going on where Joe was concerned. Still, after just a couple of days of eyeing him like the devil had just taken up residence in their tiny spare room, more of an ancient basement bunker than a bedroom when it came down to it, she took her cues from Joe and accepted him wholeheartedly. They talked about his work now and then, about her homework, about what Joe had done sometimes though he knew Judy would probably kill him if she ever found out, or she’d give it a good try at the very least. She seemed tougher than she looked. He guessed in her line of business she really had to be.

Joe, however. Joe was Joe. He was playing a part with Judy ‘cause she thought she could change him with the judicious application of God and a good woman, but Mike was pretty sure that particular combination had never really worked on guys like Joe Carroll. He played a part with Mandy, though Mike guessed it was to a somewhat lesser extent; he seemed to like the attention she paid him, how she looked at him like he was blessed with some kind of unlikely omniscience, whether that was because she’d Googled Joe Carroll’s greatest hits or just that he sounded like the smartass college professor he’d actually been once, back in the day. He tried to play a part with Mike but as they sat on the front porch one afternoon, while Judy was inside with the reverend, they argued and Mike threw a bottle at the wall and Joe yelled at him in that awful fucking fake accent and Mike punched him. Joe went down and Mike followed him down, hit him again, hit him _again_ and it was only Mandy screaming at the two of them that made him stop. He’d have kept on going if she hadn’t been there and consequences be damned. 

It wasn't until later that Mike recalled Joe telling her it was all just a misunderstanding, Joe dragging himself up off the ground and pulling Mike along with him into the trailer across the yard. It wasn't until later that Mike realised exactly what he'd done. Joe was bleeding from a cut under his eye and Mike's knuckles were scraped and that wasn’t close to the full extent of it. Joe closed the door behind them, locked it, closed the faded curtains then turned to Mike, somehow every inch the man Mike had known before all of this despite the beard and the clothes and the crappy accent that, to be fair, he dropped at that moment, finally. 

"Why are you here?" he asked. Mike shrugged, flexing his fingers, testing out the damage to his hand. "You said I would understand." 

"You don't?"

"Of course I do."

Mike frowned. "Then you know why I'm here."

"Perhaps I should say I know why you came, but I don’t have the fainted idea why you stayed."

Joe fished a bag of peas from the noisy little freezer, wrapped it in an ugly plaid shirt and pressed it to his eye as he leaned back against the countertop. Mike sighed. 

"So maybe I was wrong to come."

"Maybe you were." Joe paused, shifting the peas from his eye; it was starting to swell up already, just like Mike’s hand was. He put the peas back into place. "Maybe you wanted something from me. Something no one else could provide, at least not adequately."

Mike crossed his arms over his chest, wincing briefly as his knuckles scraped against his shirt. "So, you think you know me?"

"And why not, exactly?" Joe said. " _You_ think you know _me_ , don't you? All because you read some files at the academy, no doubt."

Mike chuckled. Unexpectedly, he chuckled. He guessed that was part of the problem, his weird-ass reactions, how hard he had to try to seem normal when he spoke to anyone other than Ryan 'cause no one else could make him make sense, or just make sense of him. Joe just smiled, which looked really fucking odd with a thin sheen of blood smeared there over his teeth from where Mike's fist had mashed his cheek into his molars. He washed his mouth out with vodka and spit into the sink, passing the parcelled-up peas to Mike to ice his knuckles. Mike took them. It was an odd sort of kindness.

They didn't need to go on. In that moment, they'd come to an understanding; Mike was just as screwed up as Joe was, and they both knew it. Ryan wasn’t the only thing they had in common.

They started to talk after that, more and more. There'd be times when they were as alone as they could be out on the porch while Mandy was at school and Judy was occupied and they'd settle down with a beer or a cheap bottle of scotch and mismatched glasses and after half an hour, an hour, they'd strike up some bizarre conversation about the literary and academic merit of the book Mandy was reading for class or some case Mike had worked before he'd gotten himself placed firmly on administrative leave, the finer points of college football or the sorry state of Joe's gloriously fake accent that Mike made vague attempts at helping him to fix. They weren't friendly about it, most of the time. They bickered a lot, disagreed though most of the time Mike had to admit it seemed they disagreed more or less just for the sake of disagreement. He didn't like Joe. He should've left. He found he couldn't. 

Weeks turned to a month. He was contributing to the bills, took care of the groceries most of the time 'cause the trunk of his SUV was more useful for that than the rusting old pickup parked out in Judy's yard, kept Joe and himself in cheap booze 'cause half the point seemed to be that it all tasted about as appealing as paint stripper no matter what they were drinking. He and Joe were endlessly surprised that no one came looking for either of them, though Mike suspected Joe had a plan in store for that eventuality and it likely wouldn’t be pretty in the slightest. Mike found he kinda liked it there, 'cause no one made demands of him and hell, at least Joe understood. He really was the only one who could, maybe even more so than Claire. Somehow, it made more sense to be there with Joe than it ever had to spend any time with Claire. He never wanted to see her again.

And Joe _did_ get it. One night, once Judy and Mandy were both safely tucked up in bed asleep, Joe told him he got it and Mike wasn't surprised though he guessed he ought to have been. They were out in the trailer where Joe usually slept since that was a part of their cover story, opposite each other at the small table with a half-empty bottle of scotch and their two usual mismatched glasses sitting between them. Mike knew he was getting really goddamn maudlin but Joe never seemed to care. In some ways, drinking with Joe was like having Ryan back. Of course, in most ways it really, really wasn’t.

"You were lovers," Joe said. It was so matter-of-fact that Mike didn't even think to deny it. Joe saw straight through him anyway, like he’d stopped even trying to put up a façade around him, so lying seemed pretty damn pointless. "It's okay, Michael. He and I were, too. Before."

"Before you tried to kill him."

Joe screwed up his face for a second. The bruises had mostly healed from where Mike had hit him but the faint outline of the tear from his knuckles was still visible there by his eye. It probably would be for a while. "Well, yes. Regrettable, but he did rather force my hand."

Mike poured them both another drink, entirely unable to give a damn when the scotch sloshed over the rim of Joe's glass and onto the tabletop. Joe didn't seem to care, either, though he usually did in the morning, when he got even grouchier than usual over the state of their living arrangements. Mike had come to understand that the cleanliness of Judy's household was more or less entirely down to Joe's manipulative complaints procedure than any sense of her being houseproud.

"We met through Claire." Mike said nothing, just took a sip of the scotch; Claire was a topic that needed to stay completely closed, at least from his end, though he had to admit he was intrigued by this and where it might be going. His interest was piqued even through the alcoholic haze, 'cause Joe rarely talked about the past, or at least that part of it. And Mike had promises to keep. 

"Yeah?"

"Yes."

Joe paused again, sipping his appalling scotch. Mike sighed heavily.

"Look, are you telling a story or are you just fucking with me?" he said. "'Cause there are simpler ways to fuck with me and if this is the way you tell a story then little fucking wonder every sane person in the world hates your book."

Joe made a show of rolling his eyes. "We met through Claire," he repeated, tapping the rim of his glass to signal Mike to pour another, and so he did. "For the investigation, of course. Apparently she told him that she thought the killer was a fan of Poe, and naturally she suggested that he speak to me. And so, we met."

He leaned back in the seat, full glass in hand though for the moment he didn't drink from it. "We had scotch. Better than this, if you can call this scotch because frankly I'm half convinced that's false advertising on the manufacturer's part. He was a drinker even then and I suppose my mistake was to think that made him less of a threat."

Joe took a sip of the drink and grimaced, like just for a second he remembered the taste of scotch with a price tag higher than Mike's monthly salary had ever been. "Claire was having dinner with a friend, probably telling her she suspected I was having an affair. I suppose that was easier for her to face than the truth and there was always at least some truth to it, of course, from a certain perspective. It was certainly true for those few weeks when Ryan and I were…” 

He paused, took another sip of his drink as he seemed to consider his next word carefully, making the correct selection. 

“Intimate," he said, with a satisfied smile, as if that summed up their whole relationship. Maybe it did.

"Y'know, he never mentioned that."

Joe chuckled. "And do you think he would have wanted anyone to know, all things considered?" he asked, which seemed entirely reasonable when he put it like that. "We were having an affair, Michael. Ryan trusted me."

"Yeah, right up until the moment he didn't."

"Touché."

It was what came next that came as a surprise. After a couple more minutes of silence and the booze Mike was pretty much convinced was going to make them both blind, Joe started to talk again like he'd made a decision, come to a conclusion, though Mike couldn't tell what exactly that was. But he talked, started with the morning after the night Claire had been out at dinner and told him Ryan had come to his office, hung over, apologetic, fishing for an idea of what had happened between them the night before while trying hard to seem nonchalant about it all. Joe had led him on, had a little fun at his expense, told Ryan that he'd made drunken advances and embarrassed him completely. It wasn’t all that hard for Mike to picture it. 

Then something had apparently clicked in Ryan's head and he’d stopped talking mid-apology. Suddenly, he was more special agent than apologetic drinker and he walked right over to Joe's chair, and he stooped, and he kissed him. Hard. 

"Why did you do that?" Joe said he’d asked when Ryan pulled back. 

"'Cause in your story you never once said you didn't want it," Ryan replied. And while that didn’t sound completely like Ryan, it sounded enough like a Joe-embellished version of him that Mike could believe it. 

Joe said he admitted Ryan was right. He admitted that he wanted it, that there was a mutual attraction. That was maybe the moment he should've known how it would end, he said, because Ryan was smarter than he’d given him credit for, but he hadn't known how to say no to the challenge.

That was the start, he said. They'd ended up pressed up against his office door, each with a hand pushed down under the waistband of each other’s pants, jerking each other off until his 10am appointment knocked on the door and they sprang apart like teenagers caught in the janitor’s closet. They'd finished it at lunchtime, the door locked this time and no more meetings in Joe’s schedule to interrupt them, pants pushed down to their knees and Ryan's hand around both his own cock and Joe's as they rubbed against each other. Mike didn’t know quite what to make of that, because it sounded just like the Ryan he knew and then nothing like him at all but he couldn’t think of a single good reason that Joe would lie to him - yeah, so there were several _bad_ reasons, petty reasons, like the fact that Joe habitually screwed with people’s heads just for fun, but when Mike thought about it, it just made sense. 

Joe passed out drunk somewhere around midnight and Mike took that as a sign he ought to get to bed. The only problem was he lay awake for half the night in the slightly funky-smelling basement room thinking through everything Joe had said to him, about that day he’d described and about the couple of weeks that followed, because he wasn’t exactly shy when it came to the details and the details, well, they’d matched up with what he knew about Ryan from his personal experience. He could practically see Ryan’s crappy motel room there off the Winslow campus because it was always the same crappy motel room wherever the hell they went with the Bureau, he could see Ryan in his suit opening the door and his drunk, lopsided smile as he let Joe into the room. He could see the whole thing, the way they pulled at each other’s ties, unsteady fingers at plucking open shirt buttons, Ryan’s chest before the pacemaker and Joe’s hands on him. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to try.

Mike’s perspectives blurred as he drifted near sleep until he wasn’t sure whose eyes he was seeing through, till he couldn’t keep everything straight in his head. Except, in the end, as he started awake with a hard-on he wished to hell he could will away, he was himself and what he was seeing was Joe stretched out above him. 

***

The week that followed was tense, though Mike tried hard to downplay it. 

Mandy kept looking at him as they worked on her math homework, glancing at him like he’d turned purple or grown a second nose or something and it was probably because she knew things were tense between him and Joe, at least from his end. She really wasn’t as dumb as everyone thought, especially when it came to the interpersonal stuff that Mike kind of sucked at and he wasn’t sure that was a great thing if he didn’t want her to figure it out. 

Judy had warmed to him somewhat over the weeks he’d been basically living in her basement but the way she looked at him sometimes that week it was tough to tell if she’d noticed the tension or not. Joe, however, had noted the tension and was carrying on regardless. He had a talent for that.

Mike spent some time in town, more time than usual, picking up groceries or jogging there in the morning just so he felt like he was still getting some exercise, getting a feel for the place. He’d never really been anywhere like that, at least not for any great length of time, but the people seemed good or at least no worse than they were anywhere else he’d been. They looked at him more or less like he’d just flown in from Mars, which he was pretty much used to from every time he’d ever had to show his badge on the job when people didn’t expect it, though right then he didn’t actually have a badge to show; he guessed the fact he was new in town and staying with the neighbourhood’s one and only resident hooker and her weird-ass family was enough to make him stand out. They’d explained his presence away as him being a friend from the army, something shaky about serving in Afghanistan like either of them had even thought about enlisting, never mind going there, but Mike guessed that was close enough to the truth to fly. They’d seen some action, at least, and some of it together, just not quite the military kind.

Of course, the main reason he was spending so much time in town was that it kept him the hell away from Joe. Until one night, when he was lying there in his crappy basement bed trying desperately not to listen to Judy humping the priest two doors and a ceiling over, he realised sickly that if he’d really wanted to avoid Joe then he could’ve just gotten into his damn SUV and driven the fuck away. If he hated the sight of the guy so damn much, he could’ve turned him in to the Bureau, called Quantico or DC or the nearest field office or even just the local sheriff’s department and gotten it over with, might even have managed to get out of there before anyone really realised he’d been there at all, though they’d get there in the end. But he hadn’t turned him in, and he hadn’t left. He had no clue what he was still doing there, why he’d thought this was such a brilliant idea in the first place, but he hadn’t turned him in and he hadn’t left and he wasn’t going to. It was a really freaking weird realisation for him to come to.

“You’re avoiding me, Michael,” Joe said. Mike opened his eyes; Joe was standing in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs that led down there from the kitchen. He wished Joe had stayed oblivious. Oblivious would’ve been easier. Of course, Joe was never really oblivious; he just came off that way because he didn’t care. "Come with me."

So he went with him. He pulled on a pair of jeans and followed him up and out like an obedient dog, not quite sure why he was going but going anyway. Joe led him outside and Mike wished he'd taken the extra couple of seconds to pull on a shirt, or indeed a pair of shoes, not that he had much in the way of clothing with him there and not that it really mattered since the air was still warm and the dirt on his feet, well, he'd planned to shower in the morning anyway. Joe went into the trailer at the other side of the yard and Mike followed him in, letting the door swing shut behind them. 

"Can I get you a drink?" Joe asked. 

"Sure," Mike replied, taking a seat on the edge of the bed like he wasn’t just waiting for Joe to get to the point already. 

Joe poured two drinks, the same cheap scotch they always seemed to drink when they got sick of the cheaper beer or ran out of it, and handed one to Mike. Joe leaned against the counter, took a sip with an expression that said he was substantially less than impressed with it. 

"You've been avoiding me," Joe said again. Mike shrugged, non-committal. "Why do you suppose that is?"

Mike tilted his chin up, looking at Joe levelly as he held his glass still in both hands. "I don't know, Joe," he said. "Why do _you_ suppose that is?" 

Joe smiled. Mike hated it when Joe smiled, and not just because he looked so unlike himself with that dumbass beard all over his face. "Oh, I think we _both_ know why that is." He set down his glass and stretched languidly, watching him as he did it. Mike folded his arms over his bare chest. "I don't think it's a coincidence that you've been avoiding me since I told you about my relationship with Ryan." 

Mike scowled but he didn’t deny it. "And?"

Joe's smile broadened. He put down his drink. "I'm going to enjoy this," he said. 

They spilled the scotch all over the floor but that didn't seem to matter. Mike wasn't sure why he didn't object, told himself he was too tired or too drunk or some combination of the two and that was why he let Joe come in closer, why he let him push him back on the bed, why he didn't just pick up and leave as Joe took off the crappy ball cap he’d been wearing pretty much constantly, tossed it onto the counter and turned back to him without even a hint of a smile remaining. He didn't say a word when Joe picked up a knife from the counter and looked at him, dark eyes somehow darker; he just propped himself up on his elbows there on the unmade bed and watched him come closer. Afterwards, he tried to tell himself he knew all along Joe wasn't going to kill him. He’d known no such thing. He was so incredibly fucked up.

"Did I hurt you?" Joe asked, the following morning, as they sat there at the little kitchen table. Mandy was in and out of the room every few minutes, eating a slice of toast in stages as she got herself ready for school, her bag hanging from the back of Joe's chair. Mike just shook his head, and Joe raised his brows at him. _Liar_ , his expression said, but Mandy came in to grab her bag before the conversation could go any further, tucking in a copy of the novel she’d been working on for English class, the one that was full of notes Mike knew Joe had written. He was going to get himself caught and it was all going to be for the sake of vanity, as if getting his ideas noticed in a high school English class in the middle of no-fucking-where was important somehow. Joe gave Mandy a smile that almost, _almost_ seemed genuine and Mike left the house with her, walked her to the road as he tried not to think, at least not about how Joe had been looking at him over their cornflakes, and how damn crazy that seemed. 

"Did I hurt you?" Joe asked again, when Mike returned returned to the house. He was still sitting at the table, drinking a cup of overly strong black coffee that he seemed to like but that Mike was going to be tasting all day. Mike leaned against the refrigerator and pointedly didn't answer, but rubbed not quite absently at the inside of one wrist over the top of his t-shirt. "I did, didn't I." Mike rolled his eyes. "Show me."

Judy was still sleeping. Mandy had left for school. And yeah, so he could've said no, he could've walked away, he could've gotten straight into his SUV and left the place altogether, but Mike scowled for a second and then pulled at his shirt instead, pulled it up and off over his head and tossed it onto the kitchen table among the empty bowls and coffee cups. It was still almost too hot for a long-sleeve t-shirt but it would've been hard for him to explain away the thin line that ran from wrist to wrist, right across his chest, if Mandy or Judy or any of Judy’s more inquisitive clients had asked him about it. It couldn’t have been accidental. He'd lain there in the trailer and he’d let Joe do it, watched him kneel astride his hips and lean in, nudging his arms wide on the mattress and pressing the tip of the knife to his wrist, sharp as a scalpel. He remembered how his heart had hammered as Joe did it, as he drew the tip of the knife up over his arm, so lightly it barely hurt at all, almost no blood in its wake, the line he left definite but barely more than a scratch.

Joe left his seat at the kitchen table and came closer as Mike leaned back against the refrigerator, cold metal at his bare back making him shiver. He hated the way Joe was looking at him, hated himself for the way his body responded as Joe ran his fingertips over that line, followed it from his wrist to his collarbone, around the dip at the base of his throat and then back down the other side, slowly, taking his time about it. Joe had disinfected it after, making the whole thing sting like a bastard and that was probably the point more than making sure it didn't get infected. It was already healing up, just hours later, but Mike could feel himself blushing red as Joe stood there, too close, far too close. Joe's hands went to his waist, settled over the bare skin just above the low waist of his jeans, and all Mike could do was look him in the eye like none of this bothered him at all. It was clear they both knew it did. 

The worst part was they hadn't even had sex that night. They hadn't even taken off all their clothes. 

Judy stirred in her room before anything else could really happen there in the kitchen and Mike told himself he was relieved as he resumed avoiding Joe. The problem was, he couldn't _really_ avoid him, wasn't even sure he really wanted to, and in the fading afternoon heat as the hot fall was starting to wane toward winter, they wound up drinking together again on the porch. The reverend came by and made some sort of half-assed attempt at ministry, something about Joe's supposed war trauma that and how Jesus could help, something that would've sounded pretty hollow given the circumstances even if Mike hadn't known the story Joe and Judy had fed the locals was really just so much bullshit. Mandy came home and went in to watch TV. They had dinner. The four of them watched some more TV together, tacky reality crap that Judy liked to watch and Mike could see Joe despised right down to his core. And then they all filed off to their respective beds just like they always did. 

Joe came by Mike's room again that night. Again, they went out to the trailer. Mike wasn't sure if he felt better or worse in the morning. 

A week passed that way. It was ridiculous and Mike wished he could just tell Joe no, it had to stop, but he'd go with him every damn night like somehow that was their new routine. But, he didn't use the knife again, there was no more blood. That second night, Joe nudged him down on the bed and instead of the knife there was a pen in his hand, a fountain pen, cheap and plastic and not the kind of thing Mike pictured Joe having used at any point in his life before then, no doubt he'd had a Mont Blanc on his desk there at Winslow or something stereotypical like that, maybe a prize, a reward for his academic performance. But the fine steel nib seemed to keep the black ink from spreading too far into the lines in Mike’s skin like it was meant for this and Joe took his time, stretched out next to him on the bed, close enough that he could feel his breath on his shoulder.

The first time, Mike didn't read what Joe wrote, not even a word of it. He made himself look away though he let him do it, stayed still after the first couple of times that he shifted and he found the pen nib was sort of sharp though obviously nowhere near as sharp as the knife blade. It was a scratchy, ticklish feeling, Joe’s hand moving with it, Joe’s gaze moving with it, over him, the intimacy of it almost unbearable. He washed it all off in the shower the next morning, though it took some time and took some scrubbing, and then they were back there that night and Joe was writing again, right down the line of his spine as Mike pillowed his head on his arms. He tugged down at the waistband of Mike's jeans, finished writing just beneath it as he sat there astride the back of Mike's thighs, and again Mike didn't read it, not just because there wasn’t a big enough mirror in the entire house for him to get a good view of it over his shoulder. He washed it off as best he could in the morning, though scrubbing his own back sufficiently wasn't exactly simple.

The third night, Joe stripped him naked. Mike knew he should've objected but he let him anyway, stepped out of his jeans and stretched out on the mattress as Joe picked up his pen. He watched him, strangely amused by the concentration on his face, bemused by the way he could write for an hour or more without needing to stop, barely even pausing. And Mike lay there like a fucking idiot, torturously hard, almost willing Joe to even acknowledge that fact as he wrote right across his belly from hip to hip. He didn't, of course. When Mike scrubbed the ink away in the morning, he recognised the text though he hadn’t meant to read it, or at least told himself he hadn’t; Joe was covering him in Edgar Allan Poe, and doing it from memory like the creepy obsessive Mike had always known he was. He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised about it. 

The fourth night, Mike let him write again. And when he was done, he pushed him away and stood up there by the bed, naked. He had _Tamerlane_ written straight down his side, armpit to ankle, which seemed ironic, which seemed to say more than Joe really intended it to about all of this because knowing Joe, he had no idea that Mike had ever read it, in spite of all their conversations. Joe smiled. Mike scowled. Joe laughed; Mike struck him, but Joe's laugh just dulled down to an amused sort of chuckle as he stepped in closer and Mike let him back him up, let him corner him against a cabinet, let him hem him in with a hand on the counter at either side of his waist. His cock brushed the front of Joe's jeans and that only made him stiffen harder. 

"Getting frustrated, Michael?" Joe said, his voice low. One hand strayed from the countertop and his fingers wrapped around the length of Mike's erection, made him hiss in a breath at the touch of skin on skin. Mike's stomach flip-flopped with something that wasn't all lust but something a shade or two darker and Joe leaned closer, that ridiculous fucking beard brushing Mike's neck. His hand around him tightened. "About time."

Mike felt no better at all in the morning. He felt sick as he sat there at breakfast, toast untouched. All he could think about was how Joe's mouth had felt on him when he'd sunk to his knees. As they ate, as he tried to eat, his head was full of Joe fucking Carroll sucking him off. 

The house was empty that afternoon, Mandy at school and Judy in town to pick up a few things though she always said she really hated going there, something about how everyone looked down at her, even the guys who came over to see her or maybe especially them. In the afternoon they went into the bathroom and Joe scrubbed the writing from Mike's skin under the lukewarm shower, pushed up against Mike's back, let him feel that he was just as hard as he was like that was somehow meant to reassure him, like Joe even cared about doing that. It seemed unexpected somehow, seemed like Joe hadn't just been playing with him after all, wasn't screwing with his head or maybe wasn't _just_ screwing with his head, at least. Of course, he probably was. That was just the way Joe worked.

There was surprisingly little talk as they towelled off and walked through the kitchen, down into Mike's room, both still naked, both still hard. Mike hated how nervous he felt as he wrapped his hand around Joe's cock as they stood there at the bottom of the stairs, hated that he let Joe kiss him, hated that it didn't feel repulsive at all as he did. The fingers of both of his hands tightened in Joe's hair and they kissed, hard, one of Joe's hands pressed hot to the back of his neck. It was fucking repellent or he told himself it was and Mike could've screamed but did nothing but slam Joe up against the closet door, grinding their hips together. Joe chuckled against his mouth and so he did it again, pushed him by his shoulders, breaking the kiss. Joe was smiling that infuriating smile and he couldn't help it, couldn't help hitting him, the back of his hand connecting across his face though that didn't stop him smiling and so he hit him again and Joe let him, let him do it again though it had to hurt, then again, _again_ , until finally he caught his wrist and stopped him. The expression on his face was one Mike had never seen there before. Suddenly it was easy to see how he’d killed all of those people, when the charm dropped away and left this behind. Maybe Mike should’ve been more afraid.

It was intense. They pushed and shoved each other to the bed, practically fought all the way through it as they knelt together, Mike's hand on Joe's cock and Joe's on Mike's. They got each other off, kissing hotly, blunt nails on each other's skin, almost biting, until it was over. By the time Judy was home, they were back out on the porch drinking cheap beers just like nothing had happened at all. 

That night was crazy. Mike went out to the trailer before Joe could come to get him, knelt astride his thighs and kissed him, hard and breathless. Joe undid the button fly of Mike's jeans; Mike stood and pushed them down. Joe undressed quickly and Mike tried to forget the fact that Joe's body was so unlike Ryan's, taller, thicker, a little softer around the middle though since Joe had been sitting on his ass for the best part of a year that was pretty much to be expected. Joe bent him over the table and pushed inside him, both of them messy with lube. When it was over, the look on Joe's face said he hadn't meant for this to happen, that he was somewhat surprised that it had. Mike hadn't, either. Joe didn't write that night. 

It went on and on and it was fucking insane. Pretty soon, Mike had been there another month, more than a month, two months, nearly ten weeks, and they were fucking every night, Joe on top or sometimes Mike was and then they ate dinner with Mandy and Judy like nothing had changed or nothing had happened at all, like Mike was just the FBI friend with nondescript, undiscussed and undisclosed issues that had brought him there to unwind. They drank together like professional fucking alcoholics because at least that seemed to make sense to both of them and then Mike would sneak away from the house in the night and they'd screw as Joe held a knife to his throat and Mike never knew if that was going to be the last time, the very last time, that it happened. He stopped telling himself Joe wouldn’t hurt him. He honestly didn’t know.

"I'm not Ryan, you know," Joe told him, kneeling between his thighs one night, two weeks later, nearly three. 

The knife over his femoral artery, sharp enough that it practically shaved the hair from his skin, should've been threatening but frankly, he just failed to give two fucks whether Joe did it or not. He knew he should've cared more but there it was. 

"This is _not_ a romance, Michael. Please don’t think it’s going to end well."

And Mike laughed. If ever there'd been a time when Joe might've ended it, it was then. 

He didn't.

***

They were watching the news three nights later when it happened. It was unexpected, the masks, the grainy subway camera footage, and all three of them looked at Joe sitting there on the couch who clearly had no idea what the hell was going on any more than they did; he even had the good grace to look moderately disgusted by what they were seeing, though Mike suspected that was more to do with the fact that someone out there was performing murder in his name than the fact that people had died. Joe was nothing if not proud of his own work.

Judy sent Mandy to bed, which Mandy objected to briefly. Joe argued with Judy, loudly, almost _too_ loudly as the reverend arrived to see her and Joe ducked his head, muttered a greeting in that jarring fake accent and went outside with Mike close behind. They hadn't talked about this, they'd barely even mentioned their shared history like maybe that meant they didn't have to face the fact that they'd wanted each other dead and tried hard to make that happen, like they could forget everything that had gone before Joe’s ‘death’. They hadn't even talked about Ryan in weeks, just bullshit like Joe's old job at the college, like Mandy’s homework and her crappy teachers, like why exactly Mike was still on suspension and no one but his family had called in the whole time he'd been staying there. They'd talked about the fact he didn't know if he was going back because talking to Joe had been getting easier somehow, definitely easier when they'd been drinking. It was like talking to Ryan, in that it was always easier when drunk.

"Tell me this has nothing to do with you," Mike said, there in the trailer. 

Joe laughed bitterly. "It has nothing to do with me," he replied. "Do you really think I masterminded an attack to take place in the New York subway from a trailer in the back of beyond, Michael? Use your head." Mike scowled. "They're just trying to get my attention. I suppose it was inevitable that someone other than you would figure out my little secret." 

"And who the hell is _they_?"

"How exactly should I know that?"

It went round and round in circles, Joe getting more and more irate as the conversation progressed until Mike was convinced it wasn’t him behind this, for once Joe Carroll wasn’t the bad guy or at least he wasn’t _this_ bad guy. He went to bed alone, confused, pissed off, angry. By the morning, he knew what he had to do.

They left in the night, three days later. Joe wrote a note for Judy and Mandy, hardly brief though Mike guessed that wordy had always been his style; he bitched and moaned about the whole thing, told Mike that Judy could cause trouble if they left like this but Mike knew that was just the apprehension talking because Joe did _not_ want to leave and Judy was hardly going to implicate herself. For a while there Mike had been vaguely concerned that Joe wanted to kill them both but in the end it made more sense to leave them there alive, it would cause less of a stir. So they left, Joe wearing that crappy old ball cap pulled right down so the gas station cameras wouldn't pick him up while Mike filled the tank. Mandy was going to be the most disappointed of the two of them they'd left behind, but Mike had a feeling it was for the best in the long run. He recognised the signs there and they said nothing good for Mandy's future if Joe stayed there with them. Besides, they had other work to do.

It was a long drive and they stopped three times not counting a detour to chat with a woman called Jana who seemed somehow familiar, three nights, three different motels where they pulled in after dark and Mike paid in cash while Joe waited in the car and tried not to draw attention to himself. It turned out Joe couldn't shut the fuck up even when he was sulking so practically the only time that there was silence all the way there was when he was sleeping or while Mike was in the crappy motel shower, scrubbing yet more Poe from his skin because apparently even when sulking like a 6-year-old, Joe had compulsions. Mike told himself the only reason he let him continue was that he needed to keep him on-side with this plan, if he could call it a plan when it was so damn seat-of-the-pants that it'd be a minor miracle if it worked. All he knew was he’d been away too long and he’d be damned before he let a bunch of dumbasses in Joe Carroll masks terrorise New York. Not when there was something he - something _they_ \- could do about it. Joe wasn’t crazy about the idea but somehow Mike had talked him round. Maybe he was just bored of keeping quiet, lying low. That was the most logical explanation.

They got into New York the night of the third day, after sunset, Joe still whining about the way the weather had changed as they headed north though Mike suspected it was mostly bluster because dreadfully, ruefully, Mike felt like he knew him, and knew all of this was to cover something like excitement welling up in him. They pulled into the garage under Mike's building and Joe kept his head down as they took the elevator up to Mike's floor, Mike keeping himself between Joe and the cameras just as casually as he could. The last thing they needed was to get caught there, before the plan really started. Mike had been starting to think about life in a federal penitentiary but that wasn’t an eventuality he was interested in beckoning on quickly.

"You left half-eaten Chinese takeaway in your fridge, Michael," Joe told him, his expression a mixture of amusement and disgust as he shut the refrigerator door. "I'm surprised it hasn't caused a plague by now."

"I wasn't planning on being away this long," Mike replied. The significant look he gave Joe seemed to tell the whole story. He'd been planning to kill him and get home inside a week, maybe something like revenge, not that he’d ever actually admitted as much, not that they’d ever talked about it. It hadn’t quite turned out that way, however, and frankly Mike still wasn’t sure how he’d made the decision, of if it’d been the right one. He guessed it was too late to take it back. Joe just seemed faintly amused by the notion.

Mike ordered pizza and Joe looked significantly less than impressed though he ate the majority of a large pepperoni without voicing any actual complaint. And then Mike handed him a brand new burner phone and his tablet and they settled down on his couch to make the call. Neither of them knew the voice of the woman who answered but when she passed the phone on, it was Emma Hill and they knew that voice. Ten minutes later, the meeting was set and Joe hung up the phone. It all seemed far too simple. Mike almost wished they’d stayed there with Mandy and Judy, but he guessed deep down he knew what would’ve happened to them all if they had. It wasn’t hard to imagine Joe with the knife and the blood on the floor, sirens and an end no one had wanted. He’d done all of them a favour here. He had to believe that.

When they went to bed, both of them in Mike's bed that hadn't been made properly since a couple of weeks before he'd left and it seemed so completely ridiculous that they took the time to change the sheets together before settling in for the night, Joe wrote for nearly two hours. He wrote over Mike's back, had to stop to change the cartridge and complained endlessly about cheap fountain pens as he continued, something about piston-fillers and inkwells and crap that Mike didn't care about even one little bit but he didn't have any particular motivation to shut him up. He liked the way Joe’s hands felt on his skin. He was going to miss that, after. He might even missed the way he talked incessantly.

And then, somewhere past 2am, they finally slept.

When he woke the next morning, Mike had to admit he'd almost expected Joe to be gone and not to find him still asleep there in his bed, hogging the majority of the sheet and all of the comforter. He woke him and Joe glared half-heartedly before he wandered off into the bathroom and Mike went out to the kitchen to attempt to put together something resembling food from what was left in his cupboards. He wound up jogging down to the shop on the corner when all he came up with was ramen and condiments that he couldn’t actually remember buying and even then, Joe was still there when he got back, whistling in the bathroom, which continued while Mike made a couple of really ugly-looking omelettes. When Joe emerged, he was wearing one of Mike's old FBI t-shirts like maybe that was funny somehow, and he'd shaved off the goddamn beard at last. Neither of them said anything about it but the change of look made Mike even more apprehensive, and something else beneath that. It was strange the effect it had on him, on both of them. Joe was very much his old self again.

"It's time," Mike said, checking the time on his phone as Joe swallowed the last bite of his messy omelette. It hadn’t tasted bad but there was still time for the two of them to die of food poisoning before the day was out and Mike guessed that would be ironic.

Joe nodded, uncharacteristically quiet. They left the apartment. They had an appointment to keep. They didn’t want to be late.

There was a problem when they arrived, that much was quite apparent. They weren't alone when they drove up to the gates, they'd been tailed for miles, tailed pretty expertly and Mike hadn't been sure whether to lead their follower on a total wild goose chase and then head back to his apartment, try to set another meeting for the following day or the day after that and lie low in the meantime, or if they should just go ahead and see what happened. They went ahead because really, fuck it, they’d come this far. In the end, something told him this was the way to go. He didn't ask Joe's opinion on the matter because he didn’t give a damn what he thought about it. This was Mike’s area of expertise more than his.

The gates opened and Mike drove up the long driveway to the rather impressive house. He wasn't sure what exactly he'd been expecting but this wasn't it and when they left the car, that was when the shots started, suddenly. Mike dragged Joe to the ground, popped back up to one knee and tried to make out what the fuck was going on over the hood of the SUV; the two guys with automatic weapons were down by then, dead and bloody on the driveway, Mike's ears were ringing with it all and Emma Hill was dragging herself back toward the front door of the house, shot in the leg, bleeding from the gut with her hands pressed over it, her gun discarded. Someone was still shooting, but not at them, maybe at her. Against his better judgement, Mike had handed a gun to Joe in the car and for some reason he was actually surprised when he aimed over the hood, fired, and hit Emma squarely in the back of the head. She went down heavily. So much for loyalty, he thought; Mike would have to remember that. Or maybe, just maybe, Joe had just wanted to spare her an agonising death. It was hard to say which it was.

"FBI!" Mike called, raising his hands above the hood of the car while Joe looked at him like he'd completely lost his mind. Maybe he had but he stood slowly, hoping the little white lie wasn't about to get him and Joe both killed. They were pinned down between the car and the house, they were running out of ammunition and if there were any more people in that house then they were not getting out of there. There had to be more people. He didn’t have a choice. He could hear the shouting inside already. They needed to go.

The shooter stood from his position there on the lawn, behind bushes. He’d probably run up from the road, was probably the one who’d been following. Mike came close to dropping his gun at his feet as he looked at him. 

"Ryan," he said. 

“Mike,” Ryan replied. “We’ve gotta go.”

***

They didn't speak much at all until they were back in the city, back in Mike's apartment with the door locked tight behind them. 

Mike felt sick. He looked at Ryan across the kitchen table and he felt sick. The look on Ryan's face was completely unreadable though he’d thought he known him so well and Mike had no idea what to say to him at all. Joe had held a gun to Ryan's head as if that was needed somehow when he was the one telling them they had to leave and they'd gotten back into the car, driven straight back to the house as a hail of gunfire erupted from the windows on the second floor of the house above them. Now there they were, back in Mike's apartment with the door locked, tense, not even trying to pretend everything was okay between them all. Joe still had a gun in his hand as he sat there on the kitchen counter, swinging his legs like he hadn’t a care in the world though his face told a different story, and Mike wasn't sure whether or not he regretted giving it to him. Ryan had holstered his. Mike's hand rested over his own as it sat there on the tabletop. He wanted to use it, but wasn’t sure exactly who he’d shoot first if he did.

"You followed us," Mike said, finally breaking the silence. 

Ryan's gaze flickered from Mike to Joe and then back again. "Yeah, I followed you."

"Aren't you going to ask why the two of us were together?" Joe asked. 

Ryan looked up at Joe again, then back at Mike. "No," he said. Apparently he wasn’t feeling particularly talkative.

Mike squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing at them with the heel of one hand. "You knew," he said. "You knew where I was and who I was with and you, what, you bugged my apartment? Or you tracked my phone? Both?" Ryan shrugged. Joe had the gall to look amused by the whole situation, on top of everything else Mike could see going through his head. "We thought you were dead, Ryan. You let me believe you were dead."

"I know. But we can't stay here, Mike."

He knew it was true but he didn't want to hear it. Honestly, he didn’t know what the fuck he wanted to hear, exactly. Maybe he just wished he’d stayed there in the basement bedroom for the rest of his life, secure in the knowledge that Ryan Hardy was dead and gone like they’d told him at the hospital, like the priest had said at the funeral when they’d supposedly buried him. He stood abruptly and he made for the bedroom but Ryan was there in a second, a hand on his shoulder; Mike turned quickly, lashed out, fist connecting with Ryan's jaw and he went down hard on his knees as Joe applauded from the counter. Mike glared at him briefly but, of course, it had absolutely no effect. Joe had apparently long since ceased to observe the general social niceties.

"We can't stay here," Ryan repeated, from his knees, as he rubbed at his jaw. Mike wanted to hit him again. He wanted to hit him again, and again after that, and he was pretty sure he wouldn't stop till he was virtually unrecognisable. "Grab your shit, both of you. We've gotta go. Right now."

And so they went. Mike shoved some clothes and ammunition and his tablet in a bag, rolled his eyes as he realised Joe's packing consisted mostly of toiletries and clean towels and a large bottle of decent vodka like any of that was going to matter a whole lot in their immediate future and so Mike packed extra clothes for him, and then they left. Joe took the back seat, back in that hideous cap that Mike had been sorely tempted to burn, Ryan likewise semi-disguised in a cap of his own and sunglasses that he borrowed from Mike's glove box. They stopped briefly for Mike to withdraw as much cash as he could from two ATMs and then got out of the city in roughly the opposite direction, looped around and headed upstate. Joe didn't shut up the whole time, going on and on like a broken fucking record behind them while Mike drove and Ryan dicked around with his tablet, as if that was going to turn up leads on the rest of the shooters back there at the house. It was insane. Ryan wasn’t a hacker and his data connection was slow as hell. And really, all Mike wanted to do was scream and shout and break the fuck down. He had no idea how he was holding it together. In their own unique ways, he was pretty sure both Ryan and Joe knew it.

They checked into a motel just after sunset, sat down around the small round table under the window once they'd closed the curtains and Mike looked at Ryan in the crappy dull light, watched it flicker over his face. He looked better than he'd seen him in a long time, maybe better than he'd ever seen him look, like he'd stopped the drinking, like he'd gotten better and fitter and fuck, that hurt, it hurt almost as much as the fact Ryan had let him believe he was dead in the first place. All he could figure was he'd gone into witness protection, found out about Claire and Joey and gone with them or maybe just gone on his own and Mike couldn't know, or maybe it was all because he'd lied to him about Claire, some kind of petty-ass revenge he’d cooked up to punish him. He guessed he deserved it, whether that was what it was or not. 

Their plan was nuts. Joe found the whole thing absolutely hilarious, which was probably just some kind of dumbass defence mechanism considering what Mike had somehow talked him into before they’d left his little hiding place, the idea that they'd stop this new spate of killings and then he'd let Joe go, give him a 12-hour head start and then he'd sic the Bureau on him, see how far he got. This wasn't much better, the idea that they were going to bait a bunch of psychos and somehow survive intact, but Ryan had more intel on them than Mike had managed to gather. The woman in control here was Lily Gray, some kind of millionaire with too much time on her hands, the others there at the house were her weird adopted kids and they'd just killed at least two of them, plus Emma. Maybe they could play on the fact that she wanted Joe, Ryan said, assuming no one had seen him. Mike said it didn't matter if they had or not because that was their in anyway; either way, they'd want Joe, whether that was because Lily wanted to make him her serial killing boy toy or because they wanted revenge for their dead brothers. They could use that.

Mike showered before bed. He had no idea what to make of any of this, didn't know what to do for the best, didn't know if what they'd planned was going to work or even if they'd come out of this alive at all. He didn't know what to think of Ryan's reappearance, wasn’t even sure what he was _meant_ to think of it, didn’t know if what he felt was relief or something more bitter or if it was just layer upon layer of both. He closed his eyes under the spray of the shower and he listened as the door opened, listened to the footsteps on the crappy linoleum floor before the bathroom door closed again. Clothes hit the floor, a belt buckle clanked against it. The shower door opened. Mike rested his forehead down against the cold tiled wall as hands settled at his hips, as Ryan's forehead rested down between his shoulder blades. He let him do it. He didn’t move away, though maybe he’d wanted to, maybe he hadn’t.

"I'm sorry," Ryan said, voice barely more than a murmur over the racket of the rickety shower. Mike smiled wryly, entirely to himself because obviously Ryan couldn’t see it. "It was the only way."

"Claire?"

"Claire," Ryan confirmed, a whole explanation contained there in her name, and sighed against his back. "But it didn't work out. I'm not going back."

Ryan's arms went around his waist as he leaned up against Mike's back. It was so familiar, so totally fucking familiar and he hated himself for wanting it after all those months of believing he'd never feel it again. Ryan's palms flattened over Mike's stomach, slipped down lower, rested there warmly. Mike braced himself with both hands on the wall in front of him, shook his head just slightly, kept it bowed. He could've sobbed. He could hardly breathe, wasn’t entirely sure how he was still standing upright. When he turned in Ryan's arms, when they kissed, it was hot and desperate and like he'd never been away at all. Mike hated him. He loved him. He felt sick.

They towelled off quickly after that, Mike's nerves far from settled, fucking roiling as he glanced at Ryan over and over like he was reassuring himself he was really there, still there. And when they got back into the bedroom, of course Joe was there waiting. He was smiling. Mike had never hated him more than he did in that moment. But fuck, he’d never _wanted_ him more, either. 

It was stupid and Mike knew it. They shouldn't have done it but the next thing he knew Joe was standing there with them by the bathroom door, Joe's fingers were in Mike's damp hair and he pulled him into a kiss right there in front of Ryan like it was some sort of display, like some sort of challenge or told the story of Ryan’s absence except when they pulled apart Joe looked at Ryan and Ryan looked right back at him. Mike still wasn’t sure why Ryan hadn’t just called the agent in charge since he was clearly working with them or at least in parallel with them but he hadn’t and it didn’t seem like he was planning to, either so maybe he was working alone after all. Joe's gaze went down from Ryan's face just for a moment and Ryan's eyes got darker as he seemed to realise Joe was looking at the scar by his heart, at the visible bulk of the pacemaker under the skin further up toward his collarbone, scars Joe had left on him. For a second, Mike thought Ryan was going to hit him, or just march over to the gun sitting there on the nightstand and shoot the bastard in the head but Mike guessed Ryan knew they needed him. He kissed him instead. Mike watched while he did it. Apparently everything Joe had told him was true, or at least it had some truth to it.

It was stupid. They should've been getting ready, going over the plan though they all knew that it was pretty thin, but there they were in bed instead. The tangle of limbs was strangely confusing; in the half-light of the crappy motel room it was hard to tell who he was kissing except for the differences he knew and noted between the two of them. He sucked Joe off while Ryan fucked him just like he always had, convinced this was a really fucking bad idea. He watched Joe push into Ryan while the two of them watched him jerk himself off, leaning back against the headboard. His head swam with it. It was all so familiar and Ryan wasn't dead after all. The way Joe was acting, it was like he'd known all along though he couldn’t possibly have known, it was all just his usual fucking bravado. Ryan watched with a wry little smile as Joe wrote all over Mike’s abdomen and when he looked in the mirror later, after, he guessed now he knew what Joe had been working up to; he had Joe Carroll's complete confession written on his skin. There was something disturbing about that, something thrilling, something dirty, but he couldn't bring himself to wash it off.

He couldn't sleep. He knew it was fucking idiocy but he went for a walk to get some air, gun tucked into the back of his jeans just under the back of his jacket because that was always a good idea. He slipped out while Joe was sleeping, while Ryan was showering, told himself he’d grab a Coke from the vending machine by the front desk, he’d stretch his legs, he’d straighten things out in his head and get himself ready. This was so completely fucked up. 

Ten minutes later he'd have regretted his choice were he not laid unconscious on the ground.

***

He woke blearily. His head hurt. He was sickly aware of the feeling of being tied to a chair, but he couldn't see. He couldn’t see anything at all. He wasn’t blindfolded so the room was dark. That or he was suddenly and inexplicably blind, but the former seemed vastly more likely than the latter.

There was talking outside but he couldn't hear the words, just the murmur of voices as he drifted in and out. He dimly registered that he wasn't comfortable but that he didn't seem to care at all so maybe he'd been drugged. Maybe he just had a severe concussion. He wasn't sure which idea he preferred. Neither seemed particularly welcome.

He had no way to tell how long he was there, consciousness coming and going. He couldn't work his hands free of whatever it was that bound them, or his ankles. He guessed at least he'd been tied to a chair and wasn’t hanging from his wrists. He couldn't rock the chair, not that it seemed like a great idea to do so since the back was so low he'd probably just knock himself unconscious, again, like he needed that if he had a concussion. He eventually stopped drifting. He tried to focus but there was nothing there to focus on, just that it was slightly chilly in the room, the air smelled stale, there were no noises filtering in but that could've meant anything from an estate in the country to a city apartment with really great soundproofing. One seemed more likely than the other, however, he had to admit.

He heard a scuffle, three shots, somewhere outside the door. His mouth was taped and the noise he made was muted but then the door opened, light flooded in, he couldn't see worth a damn except to make out two figures entering.

"Mike, it's us," Ryan said. 

"I'm sure you can guess who _us_ refers to," Joe said. 

One of them worked at the ties at one wrist, the other at the other, then his ankles. It was Joe that pulled the tape from his face, not that Ryan would've been gentler about it. He guessed in that way they were alike, at least. He stood, teetered briefly as he looked around the room that turned out to be basically yet another basement though this time on a slightly grander scale, and Joe steadied him as Ryan checked outside the door, gun in hand. Ryan turned and handed him his gun. Apparently it’d been left abandoned in the parking lot back at the motel.

"There's five or six more out there," Ryan said. 

"We need to kill them all this time," Joe said. 

Neither of them disagreed with that assessment.

It didn't take long. While yeah, it seemed the whole household was made up entirely of serial killers, they weren't really trained for this particular scenario and Mike and Ryan both were, in a really strange way, even if Joe was basically just along for the ride. They made their way around the house, Mike drawing fire at the foot of the sweeping staircase, Ryan taking out the shooter at the top, a girl, dark hair, pretty, who fell dead to the ground. There were twins, smiling like they knew something the three of them didn't and like maybe knowing something was going to get them out of there; it didn’t. Joe shot one in the chest and when the other screamed, Mike stepped up behind and put a bullet in his head. Pretty soon they were all gone, all of the others, except for Lily.

She was in the master bedroom, such as it was. The place was barely furnished, Mike had noticed that on their tour around it, a couple of masks here and there, computers, like maybe this was where they'd made their plans and it seemed sort of fitting that it end here if this was really where it'd started. She was sitting on the unmade, sheetless bed, on the top of the king-size mattress with a gun in her lap. They went in together, all three of them, through the wide double doors.

"I'm disappointed in you, Joe," she said. She really did look disappointed. She looked heartbroken, like this had all been just about him, like she'd sacrificed everything to get him. Mike guessed he'd be disappointed in her position, too. 

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Lily," Joe said. On the other hand, Joe didn’t look terribly sincere. He lifted his gun; all three of them were aiming at her. He didn't sound sorry at all. 

She went for the gun. All three of them shot her. It was difficult to say which shot killed her.

As they cleaned down the house, quickly, just making sure they'd put down all of the Grays and scrubbed away any evidence of their own presence from the scene, Mike got the story in sections from the two of them, Joe and Ryan talking over each other. Lily had wanted Joe, like she'd been searching the world for the perfect man and had somehow come to the conclusion that Joe Carroll was it, like that somehow made sense and Mike guessed it did in her slightly twisted head. Mike’s abduction was leverage to make sure Joe made the meeting, as if somehow, strangely, the Grays had decided Mike meant something to him. And so, Joe had come to the house, and he’d listened to her pitch, and he'd told her in no uncertain terms that he wouldn't be her author on a leash, he wouldn't write for her, he wouldn't kill for her, that all of this was nothing short of ludicrous and she was perfectly out of her mind if she thought any differently about it. Mike could almost see the scene. 

She'd screamed and Joe had walked out as Ryan walked in, tossed him a gun and Mike tried to imagine that as they spoke, the idea that Ryan actually trusted him with a firearm even if he didn't _trust_ him per se. Because the more they spoke, the more it was clear that Ryan did not trust Joe and Mike knew what had to come next, inevitably. Even if Ryan wasn't working with the FBI, even if he'd come here all alone and no one knew he'd gotten involved in this, there were only two ways Ryan would see this ending: with Joe dead or in jail.

"Are you going to shoot me?" Joe asked Ryan, as the story ended. He seemed genuinely interested in hearing the answer. It seemed genuinely like he didn’t know what it was.

Ryan shrugged. "I'd thought about it," he said. 

Mike sighed. And so it all came down to this. He guessed he'd known it would.

He'd missed Ryan, he really had. He'd found Joe because of Ryan, because somehow it'd seemed like finding Joe and killing Joe might justify Ryan's last completely nutso project, and might just be the revenge that he’d been looking for. He'd gone there with his gun and all the way there, on the road and in every motel room he stopped in, he'd pictured it in his head, what he'd do, what he'd say, Joe's reactions. He'd tracked down every last person who'd sent Joe letters in jail and he'd gone there to Judy's house and he'd just _known_ he was going to find him there. He was going to put a bullet in his head, in his chest, in his gut, some combination of all three. He was going to hit him, beat him, kill him with his bare hands because while that'd hurt Mike too it'd be the most satisfying way to do it. He'd turn his face to pulp and he'd feel better about Ryan being gone because of it. He'd planned to turn himself in after, but then he hadn't done it after all. He'd done something else instead. He’d taken a left turn he still couldn’t fully explain.

He'd planned to kill him then turn himself in, he thought. But now? 

He stepped up to Ryan, his heart hammering sickly as he rested his forehead down against his, as his eyes closed. Ryan let him. Mike pulled back just far enough to look him in the eye.

"I'm sorry," he said. 

He stepped back. Ryan frowned and he knocked him down to the floor with the butt of his gun. Joe raised his brows when he looked at him. 

"Twelve hours' head start," Mike said, and pointed to the door with his gun. "Just like I told you."

And Joe laughed, the sound echoing around the big empty room. "I'll see you both soon, Michael," he said. Mike told himself he wasn't sure if he wanted that or not, but he knew he did. He stopped telling himself half truths. He knew what he wanted. 

Joe left as Ryan lay there semi-conscious on the floor, groaning as he shifted on the tiles. Mike tossed Joe his car keys and he let him go, then he cuffed Ryan's hands behind his back, took his gun. He'd give Joe those twelve hours then they'd set out to find him and Ryan was going to be pissed at him, he knew that, but he'd get over it because if all of this had taught him one thing and one thing only, it was that Ryan and Joe were just two sides of the same coin, practically the same damn person, different only in the details. They were both so fucking bad for him, and one day the two of them would probably kill each other just because they didn’t have a clue what else to do, like the universe couldn’t contain them both, but this would not be that day. There was time left yet. He planned to enjoy it just as long as he could.

He watched Joe drive away. They'd find a car there somewhere on the grounds, he'd check the Gray family's pockets for keys and they'd leave soon enough, go back to the motel and wait those damn twelve hours while Ryan bitched at him, justifiably. Joe wouldn't go far, Mike thought. He wanted to be caught. He wanted Mike and Ryan to be the ones to catch him, so it could all begin again.

And maybe people were going to die because of this and maybe Mike should've felt sorry; he didn't, not even a little. He guessed that was Joe's gift to him.


End file.
